12 FALLING IN LOVE 



an overstocked world, with individual variations, some pro- 

 gressive, some retrograde, there could be no natural selec- 

 tion, no survival of the fittest. That is the chief besetting 

 danger of cut-and-dried doctrinaire views. Malthus was a 

 very great man ; but if his principle of prudential restraint 

 were fully carried out, the prudent would cease to reproduce 

 their like, and the world would be peopled in a few genera- 

 tions by the hereditarily reckless and dissolute and impru- 

 dent. Even so, if eugenic principles were universally 

 adopted, the chance of exceptional and elevated natures 

 would be largely reduced, and natural selection would be 

 in so much interfered with or sensibly retarded. 



In the second place, again, it must not be forgotten 

 that falling in love has never yet, among civilised men at 

 least, had a fair field and no favour. Many marriages are 

 arranged on very different grounds grounds of convenience, 

 grounds of cupidity, grounds of religion, grounds of snobbish- 

 ness. In many cases it is clearly demonstrable that such 

 marriages are productive in the highest degree of evil con- 

 sequences. Take the case of heiresses. An heiress is 

 almost by necessity the one last feeble and flickering relic 

 of a moribund stock often of a stock reduced by the sordid 

 pursuit of ill-gotten wealth almost to the very verge of 

 actual insanity. But let her be ever so ugly, ever so un- 

 healthy, ever so hysterical, ever so mad, somebody or other 

 will be ready and eager to marry her on any terms. Con- 

 siderations of this sort have helped to stock the world with 

 many feeble and unhealthy persons. Among the middle 

 and upper classes it may be safely said only a very small 

 percentage of marriages is ever due to love alone ; in other 

 words, to instinctive feeling. The remainder have been in- 

 fluenced by various side advantages, and nature has taken her 

 vengeance accordingly on the unhappy offspring. Parents 

 and moralists are ever ready to drown her voice, and to 



